Kell verses
(for Katherine Gordon)
She sits in her stone seat,
beside two tractor wheels,
musing, the jug beneath her feet,
earth of clay at her heels—
dear Kate, prophetess of rivers,
who sends me lone breezes!
When day dies, giving sick slivers
of light, and night freezes,
Kate, Celtic seer after the wren,
with jade shell for an eye,
and fox that shies towards its den—
she peers across the sky
til she finds, ript from its deep sea,
sea-splendid, one true star—
rich as earth, and blazing at me,
my Kate with one true star!
And far up as her dry river bed
and down the blue heather,
(dead tractor by a lean-to shed!)
we see it, together
our lush spectral star. And the way
it fires her paisley shawl
Kate's soft shawl , and breaks like a spray
of daisies along her wall,
not far from the jug and stone seat.
Alone beside the wheel,
half-hid in daisies at her feet,
sadly, she starts to feel
her Celtic night shake loose like leaves,
caught in a morning gale
Mystic wren that sings in the breeze
has star-shells for a tail
©Conrad DiDiodato 2008
